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Trip to Interserve PLC

On the 6th December 2017, 12 A- level business students were lucky enough to visit Interserve PLC in Twyford. Interserve PLC is a services company specialising in construction work, however they also have many other roles such as, catering, security, cleaning, and even prison transport. Additionally they have completed many exciting projects for example, fitting out the world trade centre in Dubai as well as The Shard and also even framework for many abstract buildings. As well as the big projects they also have contracts with everyday business as they were contracted to deliver retail cleaning services to 360 Boots stores as well as providing cleaning services to Sainsbury’s.

Upon our arrival, we were greeted by Sophie, who led us to where we were going to be doing our workshop for the rest of the day. She gave us an insight into what Interserve PLC does and how much it has achieved since being set up in the 1800’s, which for many of us was eye-opening considering we had little knowledge about the business. After our introduction we got straight on to our topic which was leadership. The main aim of the day was to develop our existing knowledge about leadership and be able to relate it to real life businesses. This of course was very useful for us students hopeful to become businessmen/women.

Following our discussion with Isa about leadership within Interserve PLC, in small groups we were able to interview a leader from Interserve PLC so that we could ask them specific questions about what they do. This was incredibly useful because we were able to use our knowledge from our lessons at school and compare them to what a leader thinks they have to do in their job role. After that, we then gave our feedback to the rest of a class so that we could see if all leaders think the same and found out that they clearly do not. This is due to them having different styles of leadership as they all need to achieve different objectives. After a short break, we then went on to talk about us as students and what qualities make a good leader. This was particularly interesting because when we first decided what each of our best leading attributes were and then did an activity about where we had shown our leadership skills, by the time we looked back at what our best quality was, most of us had changed our mind and decided that the best quality we had, was not actually what we had initially thought.

The overall experience at Interserve PLC was a great opportunity for us students as we were able to use our knowledge and put it into a business situation which was very beneficial because it allowed us to really see why leadership is so important and that anybody can be a leader. Everybody enjoyed the experience greatly and hope we can visit again!